Equipment Disparity

Mike McQueen

Now this is something that I personally don't like that I think just about all MMO's do that is particularly soul-crushing to any PvP encounters and that's where the difference in gear rarity is so big that it is impossible to overcome with skill or luck. When 2 level 10's fight yeah gear should matter, but so should a players timing, skill, and dice rolls. In that same breath I'm of a mind that 5 level 2's should have a chance vs. 1 level 10 character. As it stands right now, and in most games, a max level character could wade into a sea of low level ones and never even risk dying all because their gear stats are astronomical compared to base low level gear. If we hark back to D&D the difference between a regular longsword (1-8) and a longsword +1 (2-9) is maybe 12%, and sure having an orange legendary +5 longsword (6-13) would make an impact, but a lot of a character's power was baked into the character itself in the form of hit points, skills, feats, etc. I blame the gear treadmill with the psychology of constant incremental upgrades for pushing the envelope this far, but it's a conditioning us gamers need to be broken of; a loop that needs to die.

Break the wheel Steven, break the wheel.

apocrisy

I disagree with parts of this post, GW2 broke the wheel and with it their potential playerbase, literally they only have one gear set you can obtain at endgame in a matter of hours and the rest is all horizontal progression for more or less no real power gain, cosmetics and mounts and style practically.

I don't agree that 5 level 2s should be able to have a fighting chance vs a level 10. As a level 10 player in any RPG game compared to a level 2 player you have experienced a lot more combat, as a level 2 character you have succesfully moved from the spawn area to the first major city. It's kind of like saying 5 people that know how to walk should be able to overcome the same obstacles as someone that engages in parkour does.

I don't know why you would use D&D as an example, anyone that wanted to do damage would play using magic because it was broken, BG3 finally fixed melee to be more balanced but even then casters generally outperformed any melee.

The scaling needs to be adjusted sure, gear difference should never even double in strength from an uncommon weapon to its legendary counterpart (lets be honest, commons are generally only useful for vendoring in most RPGs and shouldn't really count into the threadmill equation)

kadimir

??? Pretty sure if yoy had a standard longsword and I had a +5 flaming longsword you'd lose everytime.

If you dont want gear disparity then even it out by actually putting in the work.


People said TERA was too gear based, then they made equalized BGs, and all those kids got murdered because they still had no idea how to PvP. Do everyone a favor and don't play MMORPGs, or go GW2. Open world pvp is not fair. You wouldn't want the new guy at work with less experience and less training to start out making what you make after you've spent years at it, and in that situation you aren't even competing directly in a zero sum match.